Friday, June 18, 2010

"The Three Terrors," and the ongoing war against Israel

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/06/026552.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+powerlineblog%2Flivefeed+%28Power+Line%29

            There was considerable sympathy shown in various places for the Hamas controlled Palestinians living in Gaza after the Israeli "satirical site, Latma" produced "We Con the World."   According to the above, Power Line article, You Tube was forced to remove the "We Con the World" skit, but the group isn't sitting still.  Here they are with "The Three Terrors": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmffgIqlAYA
            Those who oppose Israel or favor Hamas aren't going to be impressed, but I have yet to hear any arguments that dispute the facts that are generally understood by anyone willing to spend the time and trouble to gain them.  Hamas controls Palestine, and Hamas is a terrorist organization.  Hamas not only employed "terror" as a tactic in the past.  It employs "terror" today.  The CDI (Center for Defense Information) has this to say about Hamas:
NAME: HAMAS (Islamic Resistance Movement)
DATE STARTED/FIRST ACTIVE: 1987.
GOALS: Establishing an Islamic Palestinian state in place of Israel.
MAIN ANTI-U.S. ACTIVITIES TO DATE: Unknown.
STRENGTH: Unknown number of hard-core members; tens of thousands of supporters and sympathizers.
OPERATIONAL LOCATIONS: Primarily the occupied territories, Israel. In August 1999, Jordanian authorities closed the group's Political Bureau offices in Amman, arrested its leaders, and prohibited the group from operating on Jordanian territory.
AFFILIATIONS: Receives funding from Palestinian expatriates, Iran, and private benefactors in Saudi Arabia and other moderate Arab states. Some fundraising and propaganda activities take place in Western Europe and North America.
[CDI'S] COMMENTS: Formed as an outgrowth of the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Various HAMAS elements have used both political and violent means, including terrorism. Loosely structured, with some elements working clandestinely and others working openly through mosques and social service institutions to recruit members, raise money, organize activities, and distribute propaganda. Also has engaged in peaceful political activity, such as running candidates in West Bank Chamber of Commerce elections. A Designated Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) listed as "active" during 2000.
            LAWRENCE'S COMMENTS:  The CDI information is well known to me, but so many express outrage against Israel for assuming it.  So it is helpful to mention frequently that these are the facts.  Hamas is an Islamist organization which uses terrorism as a tactic.  The Hamas goal, seen above, is "Establishing an Islamic Palestinian state in place of Israel."   They defeated Fatah "politically" to some extent as a result of promising to follow a "road map to peace" that would recognize Israel as an independent state.  They reneged on that promise however and renewed their resolve to accomplish their long-standing goal of establishing an Islamic Palestinian state in place of Israel.
            For centuries, the Jews were hounded from place to place.  Then during a series of brutal pogroms in Russia, Theodor Herzl initiated a serious movement seeking to establish a permanent homeland for the Jews.  Palestine at the time wasn't what it is today.  It was a large sparsely populated region controlled by the Ottoman Empire.   At the time of the Balfour Declaration and after World War One, the British Mandate for Palestine, Islamism was not the force that it is today.  The Arab strain of Islamism originated with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928.  Hassan al-Bannah (1906-1949) was the initial leader, but Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966) became their greatest promulgator of Islamist doctrine.  Hamas, the Palestinian Branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, wasn't created until 1987. 
            At the time of the Balfour Declaration (1917) there was no Muslim Brotherhood and no Hamas.  The League of Nations granted Great Britain its Mandate for the creation of a Jewish National Home at that time.  Note that the previous "owner" of Palestine was The Ottoman Empire, but it sided with the Germans during World War One.  It was only thanks to the efforts of Attaturk that anything at all survived.  The previous "owner" of the Palestinian region was no longer in existence after World War One, and Britain was able to fulfill the Mandate and establish the Jewish National Home.  In 1947 the United Nations gave its blessing, voting in favor of the Partition of Palestine and the creation of a Jewish State, an Arab state, and a UN-administered Jerusalem.  Britain established the Jewish Nation from a remnant of the Ottoman Empire, but once the Arabs adopted the ideology of Sayyid Qutb there was no possibility of their ever accepting the permanent existence of Israel. 
            What I have described is an outline of the creation of Israel and the enmity of Islamist Arabs, especially Hamas.  To ignore these facts and restructure events in terms of "humanitarian" need or some other modern Liberal concern du jour does no justice to the situation as it exists.   The Islamist justification for the Islamist eternal war against Israel is the same justification that they invoke for an eternal war against the West.  There is no strategic difference.  There is a present-day tactical difference, however, in that they are more active against Israel than they are against the rest of the West, but we in the West are enemies together with Israel against Radical Islam.  To side with Islamism against Israel -- as we saw recently when many in the West sided with Hamas and Hezbollah against Israel is potentially self-defeating.
            Lest any of this sound to untrained ears as belligerence, let me reemphasize that war has been declared against us by Radical Islam.  One can read it in the writings of Sunni Sayyid Qutb and in the equivalent Shiite Ruhollah Khomeini. 
            After we agree that it is the avowed intent of the Islamists to defeat all non-Islamic nations and peoples and establish Islam throughout the world, we can debate whether they can pull it off.  Many, perhaps most, in the West think they cannot.  But even if they cannot, they have been concentrating upon one tiny corner of the West, Israel, and we Westerners have ample experience in our own past to teach us how self-defeating it is go give up any single Western nation to an enemy.  To do so only brings the enemy a bit closer to the rest of us.
           

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